The sweet and sour tastes of 24 hours and 7 days

Be creative, do something different.

Creators nowadays lack creativity. New products are often derived from an established franchise, whether they are movies (like Men in Black) or video games (like Devil May Cry). Although economists suggest that milk cows should always be dried out before sending it to the coffin, there is a catch. The reuse of an established brand is acceptable, as long as the content remains new and original. The main reason why the Final Fantasy series remain perpetually popular is because of originality. Every story is different, and every setting is unique.

Envious of the success of Apple iPods, many companies are attempting to create an enhanced alternative. I am sympathetic for them. Even though these companies may be able to dent Apple’s dominance, the market share will remain mostly unchanged unless they can create something innovatively different. The same story applies to Playstation 3. Sony has decided to drop the vibration feedback of the DualShock controllers in favor of the accelerometer motion sensor. What Sony needs to remember is that motion sensor is only meaningful for action games, while one of Playstation 2’s greatest strength is its huge library of RPG games from Japanese developers. It is sensible for Sony to chase after the new market that Wii has uncovered, but if Sony still treasures its founding customers, it should also release alternative controllers with traditional vibration feedback. As it stands right now, Sony is trying to gulp down a huge segment of the gaming market and slightly forgetting about how big its stomach is.

Quasi-disruptive technology is all about creativity and innovation. Instead of improving on an existing design, why not come up with a new one on your own? Instead of adoring the motion sensing technology of the Wii Controllers, why not come up with a multi-touch screen instead? How about a multi-block Tetris, where multiple Tetris blocks can drop simultaneously, and a gamer needs to use all ten fingers from both hands to quickly rotate and move the Tetris blocks down before a new one appears.